National "Citizens" Coalition II
Last time I looked into the NCC's position on campaign free speech. In this update, I would like to stay on the topic of electoral reform and look at plank 5, which they have pithily summarized "end welfare to politicians".
No, I'm afraid they aren't suggesting bringing their salaries down, because that would prevent us from attracting the "best and the brightest" (which oddly enough includes David Emerson). The NCC is (of course) going after recent changes to the Canada Elections Act that attempt to democratize the process of running for office by providing a quarterly allowance to official political parties that win at least 2% of the popular vote in the previous election.
In the parlance of the NCC's chillingly-titled Agenda for Canada, the Canadian public is being forced to support political parties against their will. While the thought that some of my tax dollars is being spent on the Conservative party campaign does raise the bile a little, the fact that all parties, including the Green Party, get some money to make their platforms known is on the whole positive.
Elections are won and lost in large part on which party can best mobilize the largest share of the electorate. This means money - money for offices, staff, travel, and increasingly - advertising. Advertising has become by far the greatest cost that any party carries during a national election campaign. No matter how noble the ideals behind a political party, if it does not have sufficient funds to get the platform in the face of the voter, there is very little chance that they will get the vote. The financing laws in the Canada Elections Act were put there to make it possible for smaller parties to receive some funding in the hopes that their ideas might be presented more fairly to the public. Money does not buy votes, but a lack of money denies them.
Naturally, in the current system some parties will be richer than others - there is no limit to the amount of money that a party can spend for instance, so the playing field is far from level. That is always going to be the case in a system in which political parties are allowed to solicit the public for funding. Larger parties will have more cash, as will parties that manage to tap donors that themselves have more cash. The system is still stacked in favour of the larger, business-friendly parties; these campaign financing laws have a long way to go before an actual fair vote becomes possible - but they are a start.
This will likely not be an issue in a minority parliament; I mention it mainly to highlight the tone of the National Citizen's Coalition. Whether the Conservative Party acts on this in the future will tell us a lot about whether it actually believes any of its talk about "grassroots democracy" - because that is what these laws are really all about. Naturally, the Conservative Party talk about "grassroots" is bullshit - they are as deeply-indebted to corporate Canada as the Liberals. It's just that "grassroot" talk has gotten them quite a long ways, and may carry them as far as it has the Republican Party to the south.
And that's really the yardstick, isn't it?
No, I'm afraid they aren't suggesting bringing their salaries down, because that would prevent us from attracting the "best and the brightest" (which oddly enough includes David Emerson). The NCC is (of course) going after recent changes to the Canada Elections Act that attempt to democratize the process of running for office by providing a quarterly allowance to official political parties that win at least 2% of the popular vote in the previous election.
In the parlance of the NCC's chillingly-titled Agenda for Canada, the Canadian public is being forced to support political parties against their will. While the thought that some of my tax dollars is being spent on the Conservative party campaign does raise the bile a little, the fact that all parties, including the Green Party, get some money to make their platforms known is on the whole positive.
Elections are won and lost in large part on which party can best mobilize the largest share of the electorate. This means money - money for offices, staff, travel, and increasingly - advertising. Advertising has become by far the greatest cost that any party carries during a national election campaign. No matter how noble the ideals behind a political party, if it does not have sufficient funds to get the platform in the face of the voter, there is very little chance that they will get the vote. The financing laws in the Canada Elections Act were put there to make it possible for smaller parties to receive some funding in the hopes that their ideas might be presented more fairly to the public. Money does not buy votes, but a lack of money denies them.
Naturally, in the current system some parties will be richer than others - there is no limit to the amount of money that a party can spend for instance, so the playing field is far from level. That is always going to be the case in a system in which political parties are allowed to solicit the public for funding. Larger parties will have more cash, as will parties that manage to tap donors that themselves have more cash. The system is still stacked in favour of the larger, business-friendly parties; these campaign financing laws have a long way to go before an actual fair vote becomes possible - but they are a start.
This will likely not be an issue in a minority parliament; I mention it mainly to highlight the tone of the National Citizen's Coalition. Whether the Conservative Party acts on this in the future will tell us a lot about whether it actually believes any of its talk about "grassroots democracy" - because that is what these laws are really all about. Naturally, the Conservative Party talk about "grassroots" is bullshit - they are as deeply-indebted to corporate Canada as the Liberals. It's just that "grassroot" talk has gotten them quite a long ways, and may carry them as far as it has the Republican Party to the south.
And that's really the yardstick, isn't it?
Well, if we're going to take the funding away from smaller parties, lets make it up to them by giving them something better - a seat at the table. If we used a system of Proportional Representation, and actually allocated seats in the House based on percentage of votes cast - the Parliament would look like this:
Conservatives - 112
Liberals - 93
Bloc Quebecoise - 32
NDP - 54
Independant - 2
Other - 16
BTW, I forget where I saw it - think it was the Grope and Wail, but while the Conservatives raised more funds than the Liberals, their funding came mostly from individual donors - the Liberals still beat them in Corporate Donations. Of course, that's a meaningless distinction, since all that means is instead of the CEO of KillKyoto Oil Inc making a corporate donation to the Conservatives, he just makes a donation out of his own pocket. A more important point would be do find out just who donated money to Harper - I'm willing to bet you'll find a lot of right wing groups looking to strike down abortion and gay rights and bring back capital punishment among them.
Posted by
Anonymous |
Mon Feb 13, 07:11:00 PM
Excellent points, all, Dan. I would dearly love to see some form of proportional representation or other, though the funding also has to be part of it.Just to pick a small party that does draw an appreciable amount of support, if the Green Party had to rely only on its own financial resources they'd have very little advertising budget and many wouldn't hear what they have to say.
As for the breakdown of funds, I agree that it really doesn't matter. The NDP get a big chunk from labour unions, another source that would be denied smaller parties.
Don't they have to identify their donor sources at some point?
Posted by
kevvyd |
Mon Feb 13, 08:44:00 PM
I think we should use what Hunter S. Thompson called the NASCAR doctrine - politicians need to wear the logo of any donor on their suit.
Posted by
Anonymous |
Mon Feb 13, 10:51:00 PM